Alright, let's turn in our confession of faith to chapter 8 again. Last time we were together we were studying section 2 and I gave you a kind of an introductory biblical lesson on the person of Christ. We're going to be looking at the confession's specific statements tonight and the way that they're supported from scripture. But before we actually look at the confession, Let's just stop and think for a minute here what we're doing. We try to interpret Jesus Christ, who he is, what kind of person, persons, what nature or natures he might have. This week, culturally, there's a kind of greater emphasis and attention being given to this person, Jesus, because we're celebrating what's called Easter. Of course, you know we celebrate the resurrection every Lord's Day. Anyway, it's come to be thought at this time of year because of the time that Jesus rose from the dead that there'd be a special celebration. Now when the world gives attention to this person that Christians worship or make their leader or whatever, how are we to interpret Jesus? What is he? Who is he? What's he all about? There was a movie a few years ago I think it was entitled The Gods Must Be Crazy or something to that effect. Those of you who have seen it know that the general plot is this Coke bottle gets dropped out of an airplane and this tribe of natives find the Coke bottle. But now what is the Coke bottle? You see, this is something that's come from outside their culture, outside their experience. And what is illustrated in a humorous way there is that You have to apply, by analogy, you have to apply your own experience to strange objects or events or whatever it may be and try to make sense out of them in terms of what does make sense to you. So we tend to look at the strange or the new or the bizarre in light of what we've experienced previously so that we can make, again, some kind of sense out of it. Tomorrow evening, I believe, on one of the major networks, there's going to be a special on Jesus. Who was he? Who's the real Jesus? Or maybe it's on tonight, I don't know. But I saw it advertised, and I thought to myself, well, you know, the first thing that happens is because I have this knee-jerk reaction, I've had it happen so often, is, oh no, another one of these. You know, who is the real Jesus? And we trot out all these liberal scholars and everybody with their personal opinion, and then you end with some kind of ambiguous ending like, some people think this, and other people have trouble with that. I noticed also this last week, Time Magazine had a cover, a very dramatic cover, and the special article featured inside was on can we believe in miracles any longer. And so I was out on the road and I thought, well, a little pop theology couldn't hurt too much, right? Well, it turned out I really think that was a misleading title and so forth. It wasn't so much about the concept of miracles in general, but more particularly this miracle of the resurrection and whether that's really a symbolic way of talking about the teaching of Jesus living on after he died or the people who were devoted to Jesus, the church called his body rising from the dead, as it were, or whether he literally rose from the dead, and what's to be said for this and said for that. Well, all this stuff's swirling around us, right? So I just thought it'd be good for us to start tonight and just ask this very basic philosophical, theological question. How are we to interpret Jesus? And the answer I'm going to suggest to you, and I'm going to prove it. I will prove it. I'm trying to illustrate it by contrast to the alternatives. The answer is only Jesus can interpret himself. Only Jesus can interpret himself. If we're going to have an accurate reading of who he is, what he is, what his life is all about, we're going to understand this very different person. We're going to have to listen to him. We're going to have to accept If we accept it at all, we're going to have to accept it on His say-so. Because what is there in human experience that we could appeal to that would help us understand someone who is God and man simultaneously? And what is it in human experience that could have any more authority than the God-man speaking? So if Jesus is the God-man, the point is there's nothing in my experience that could possibly be more authoritative than his own interpretation of himself. And if I were to be left to myself to interpret him, what would I make of Jesus? I mean, how many of you have encountered someone who simultaneously was eternal and yet born on a particular day? I mean, there's just nothing in our background that gives us an analogy for that sort of thing. So this is why, I mean, I don't really pity them because God will hold them accountable for their error, but this is why in one sense you can sympathize with humanists and liberals trying to interpret Jesus. It's an impossible thing for them to do. Jesus must come out either as a mere man who tricked people, the magician interpretation of Jesus, I like to call that, I mean, whether he's trying to be a magician, but the point is, you know, he The Time Magazine article talks about one theory that Jesus was able to help people with psychosomatic problems. So even though they couldn't walk, it wasn't really a physical problem, he helps them with their own self-esteem, their own inner emotional problems, and then they end up walking. But do you understand why somebody would do that? Why would anybody... I mean, if you saw somebody able to make another individual walk who hasn't been walking for years, and you didn't bring Christian worldview to bear on that, wouldn't you end up with something like that? You'd have to say, well, there's got to be some, you know, Jesus had the psychological key for these people, sort of thing. Or there's Jesus, you know, the man who is mythologized. He's made bigger than life by people who are so attached to him. That, too, we have analogies in our experience. We know what it is to have a hero who is, you know, really built up to be much more than he really is. Many heroes can't live up to that. I think of Mickey Mantle, you know, who talks about he just could not be the person all these fans wanted him to be. And he turned out to be a drunkard and so forth. And I'm not making fun of him or cutting him down. I feel very bad for him. That's just a big load to bear. But fans do that, you know, whether it's, you know, with rock musicians or athletes or, you know, great writers, whatever it may be. We tend to overindulge the praise. So maybe that's what Jesus is all about. It's like he never really did all these things, but as the generations went by, it's just like everybody had to outdo somebody else in terms of these great stories about Jesus. And eventually he's raising the dead and walking on water and doing miracles of all sorts. That I can understand. If you depend only on your own experience, you'd have to draw, by analogy, on something that you can understand from your own background. Or you can go to the other extreme and say, well, you have the occult Jesus, you know, people who can't make sense out of somebody doing these sorts of things or being the kind of person Jesus is. And so then you get, you know, your new age Jesus and you get, you know, the Jesus from out of space and, you know, Jesus as a spirit and an angel and on and on and on and on, those sorts of things. Well, whichever way you go, My point is, left to ourselves, we can't make sense out of this one that is presented to us in the Bible, because he's so different, he's so unique. And so I'm glad we're doing this study tonight, because basically what the Puritans have attempted to do in chapter 8, section 2, is to give the biblical interpretation of this very unusual person, which in the end is to say, to let Jesus interpret himself. And now let's read it. Section 2 says, the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin. being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary of her substance, so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man? Let's go back, and this is such an excellent statement here, so concise to the point, and yet complex, incorporating many facets of truth and protecting us from many pitfalls of error and heresy that are possible when it comes to interpreting Jesus. I'd like to take it apart phrase by phrase. The confession begins by saying that the Son of God, and then immediately the Son of God is interpreted, the second person in the Trinity. Now why do they do that? Well, first of all, you have to remember that Son of God could be an expression applied to a human being, right? Believers are sons of God, children of God. And so the son of God here, the confession tells us, is not just any other believer. Now I know this is incredible, but there are many people in the 20th century who have interpreted Jesus as just the best example of what it means to be a child of God. Jesus is the son of God par excellence because he was the one who understood the fatherhood of God and that all men were his neighbors. And so that's what he calls us to, is to trust in God our Father and to love our fellow man. And Jesus did that par excellence and therefore he's called the Son of God. We're all sons of God too, and we're just trying to grow up to be more like Jesus, the, you know, model, paradigm Son of God. But the Confession will have nothing of such a thing. The Son of God here is interpreted as God the Son. You understand that? God the Son, the second person in the Trinity. The Trinity has already been expounded in an earlier chapter, and so reference can be made back there. Now this one who is the second member of the Trinity, the second person in the Trinity, God the Son, is very anti-God. Eternal God, He didn't come into being. He didn't have a beginning point. And he's very God. He's not less than God. He's not just God-like. He's not quasi-God or close to God. He is very God. The real article. Eternally so. Of one substance and equal with the Father. So already many cultic heresies are being rejected by the Puritans here. Anyone who wants to say that Jesus was the first creation of God, was the highest creature closest to God, that Jesus was somehow used by God in a very special way but was nevertheless subordinate metaphysically in terms of his nature to God. Anybody who holds those views cannot affirm the confession at this point because the confession says He's not of a different substance or of an inferior sort of being. He's of one substance, and that means he's equal with the Father. So, we have this God the Son, fully God, eternally so, equal with the Father. And here's the amazing thing. This Son of God did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature. Listen closely. These guys knew how to do theology. took upon him human nature. It does not say he became a human being. He was not changed from equal with the father into a human being. The kenosis heresy, the word kenosis means emptying or pouring out. The kenosis heresy says that when Jesus came into this world, God gave up his godhood. God gave up his divinity in Jesus and he became a mere man. That view is what I call, when I teach theology, incarnation by subtraction. God becomes man by subtracting from himself all those things that make him uniquely God. That special transcendent being who is our creator. Kenosis says Jesus is God minus divinity. and thus merely a man. But the confession teaches incarnation by addition. It's not as though God gave up his deity, but rather God in the person of the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, added to himself a new nature, a human nature. He took on him, man's nature. so that you cannot interpret Jesus as a transmogrified being, once God, now man, nor can you interpret Jesus as a man who is striving to make the leap over the gap into Godhood. Jesus is God and man added together. The Son of God did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature. If you look down below at the proof text, we begin the section labeled K. John 1, verse 1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Not the Word was a God, as Jehovah's Witnesses like to tell you. Anyone tells you that, tell them they don't understand the Greek, that is not true, but we've covered that before. The Word was God, then verse 14 says, and the Word was made flesh. and dwelt among us. The word didn't stop being the word. The word was enfleshed, took on a tabernacle, a human body. We beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten of the Father. Notice that? Only begotten. I've explained that to you before. Can anyone make my day, remind me what only begotten means? What's that? Uniquely, the one and only, one of a kind. We started the section by pointing out that the Son of God is not to be interpreted as one of many sons of God, but he's the best, but he's the only begotten of the Father. He's the unique Son of God, full of grace and truth. And then 1 John 5.20 says, we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ. The Son of God is come." So this supports the opening statement of the Confession that the Son of God was God Himself, very God, equal with the Father. He did come into the world. Then Philippians 2.6 says, "...who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God." That's a difficult phrase to translate and because the theology is so controversial Now this is a real battleground among commentators and theologians. But the verse would appear to be saying that because Jesus was already in the form of God, that is, he was everything God was, he didn't have to grasp after being equal with God. It isn't as though Jesus was made a little lower than the Father and now he's like grasping to get up there and be just like God, but rather he didn't have to grasp after it. It was something he already possessed. Galatians 4.4, but when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. This made of a woman will help us later, by the way, in terms of Jesus being born of Mary's substance. Okay, we continue in the Confession. The Son of God took on man's nature. And then the confession says, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, essential properties, what is it that makes a property essential to something? It's in a different category, right? I'll use my traditional mermaid illustration to teach essential properties to you and accidental properties. I want everyone to think about a mermaid right now, especially you guys now. Is the mermaid you're thinking about, does she have red hair or blonde hair? Let's just assume, Dave, you probably thought of a blonde mermaid, right? You didn't? You're married to a blonde. I'm amazed at you. You thought of a red-headed mermaid? I said either blonde or red hair. Well, you cannot, you've got to do it my way. I'm the teacher here. Okay. Blonde, okay. Now, you're thinking about this blonde mermaid? Okay, now I want you to change the color of her hair to red. Is she still a mermaid? Okay. I want to talk about the anatomy of this mermaid now. Let's talk about the lower portion of the mermaid, okay? What is the lower portion of a mermaid, Joe? Fishtail. Now I want you to imagine the same mermaid without the fishtail but having human legs. Is it a mermaid? You have to speak up. No. So what's the difference between hair color as a property and the configuration of your lower body being fishtail or human legs? Well, the color of hair is not an essential property of mermaids. You can be a mermaid and have different color hair. You can't be a mermaid and have human legs. You all with me? So as Mike said, it's a property when it is subtracted means you no longer have the same kind of thing. Now, Jesus had a man's nature with all the essential properties. All the essential properties. What are some essential properties of being a human being? Can somebody be a human being without a body? Or at least at some point having a body? Okay, so a human body, right? Now, are human bodies present everywhere in the world? What I mean is, is a human body present everywhere? No, where a human body is what we call localized, right? That's an essential property of a human body. If it's not localized, we wouldn't call it a human body. It'd be like a mermaid with human legs, just to take our illustration. Now, how about this? Is sin essential to being a human being? No. A person who acted righteously would still be a human being. A person who always acted righteously and never failed to do so would still be a human being, right? And so sin is not part of the definition of taking on a human nature with all of its essential properties. Let me ask you this. Can a human body die? Can it get sick? Can it suffer? Can it get tired? If Jesus took on a human nature with all of its essential properties, then it was possible for him to suffer, to be sick, to die. And it was located at one place at a time, and so forth and so on. Not only did he take on himself a human nature, man's nature, with all the essential properties, but the common infirmities thereof. And notice immediately the Puritans add, yet there is one thing that is common to human beings that is not essential and Jesus had nothing to do with it, yet without sin. Hebrews 2.14, for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same flesh and blood that is that through death how could he die if he didn't have a human body that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death that is the devil verse 16 for verily he took not on him the nature of angels but he took on him the seed of Abraham he took on a true human nature he was a Jew in particular wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. And so Hebrews teaches us that Jesus was just like us. It behooved him to be made like his brothers. Don't ever think Jesus doesn't understand what you're going through. Jesus was exactly like you as a human being. The one difference being the one mentioned in Hebrews 4.15, for we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are in these three words that make all the difference in the world, yet without sin. Jesus has undergone every temptation, every trial, every bit of suffering that you will ever know. The difference being that he never gave in to sinning in the process. He is a tough, tough object for interpretation, isn't he? We say to err as human, You ever heard that expression? Ooh, that's a slippery one. You want to agree with that or not? We certainly want to say that everybody makes mistakes, but then we do want to leave room for one unique human being, and we want to argue that it is not in fact part of essential human nature to make those mistakes, because Jesus was perfectly human yet without sin. And then we're told he was, yes, Well in the sentence that I just uttered, I meant by mistakes both moral and non-moral errors. Are you trying to deny blame for that, Mike? But you would like to know more abstractly, were all mistakes sinful mistakes? Well, I don't think that all mistakes are sinful mistakes. Okay. So could you just make a, you know, a judgment based on finite human ability in the sense of, you know, judging the distance between one place and another? Well, the question, if he answered that yes, Jesus could have optical illusion, would not imply that therefore Jesus had sinned, because not all mistakes are sin. We've already said that. But I would say that in addition to saying that Jesus did not sin, he also made no mistakes. I would say it's because he was the God-man. can offer a conjecture. I think what you can say is that even where his physical faculties, obviously, he can't. There are things beyond his vision or a point at which his vision can be blurred. His wisdom is such to know that that's the case and not to conjecture, not to try and make a judgment about things that his physical senses couldn't get to. Maybe this is an illustration. Jesus had eyeballs, just like human eyeballs. And therefore, given the curvature of the earth and the way our eyes see things, if there were railroad tracks in Jesus' day, as he looked up the tracks, they would converge. The difference is Jesus would never make a mistake of asserting anything or acting on the basis of, well, they must really converge up there. He would know better than to do that. But his eyes would still see things converging in the distance. That's part of the human nature and the kind of body that God has given us. Now we're told he was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary of her substance. Two things have to be noted about this very precise statement. First of all, Jesus had no human father. His mother was a virgin. And the power of the conception not arising from the sex act is that of the Holy Ghost bringing it about in the womb of the Virgin Mary. So Jesus is born of a woman, but he's God's son, not Joseph's son. He was Joseph's son socially and legally, but he was not in fact Joseph's son. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost. He was conceived, to put it another way, miraculously through God's power in the womb of the Virgin Mary. But these last three words are often not appreciated for their significance. Of her substance. Of her substance. Now, we know enough about genetics today that it's kind of easier, I think, for us to explain this than it might have been even for the Puritans of the 17th century. Just often think about it. Since God can create things out of nothing, God could have put a baby in Mary's womb, a fetus, where, to use our modern way of putting it, both the ovary, excuse me, the, yeah, both the ovary and the sperm would have been created from nothing. So that it's like a full human being made out of nothing whatsoever. But the confession is careful here, isn't that interesting to say, that the miracle, it's really a miracle, is not a miracle on both the male and female sides of things. Because this person who was born is of her substance. Which is to say that one of Mary's eggs was made to be the God-man. Isn't that amazing? God didn't just make, like a doll, a full-formed human being come out of Mary, but he took her substance and miraculously, as a virgin, had that become a human being. Wow. What's the significance theologically of that? That's right. Jesus is not just a humanoid who dropped in from Mars, as it were, looking like us. Jesus really is like us. But he's not like us. At the very same time, we have to say he's not like us because none of us had a mother who was a virgin who gave birth to us. So there's a miracle here, and it's very important to see it's a miracle, but not such a miracle as to make Jesus a humanoid. He's a true human being of her substance. Luke 127, to a virgin a spouse, to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb. Notice there was a genuine conception in the womb of Mary. And bring forth a son shall call his name Jesus. The angel answered, said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing, that consecrated thing, which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And you notice again Galatians 4.4, born of a woman. Not just born through a woman, as though Mary was just incubating this baby that God put there, but born of a woman as well. And now the writers of the Confession bring this information together in a summary, so that two natures were inseparably joined together in one person. Let's start with just that much. Two natures. Not two persons who were sharing a common goal or got along with each other. Jesus is not a divine person and a human person. He's but one person, one center of consciousness, volition, emotion, and so forth. But the characteristics of his consciousness, his personal volition, emotion, etc., are both human and divine. So two natures in one person. I'm going to say this a few times just so it gets ingrained in the same way I wanted my children to learn this when they were younger. Two natures, one person. Two natures and one person. Not two persons with a common nature. Not two persons with two different natures. One person, two natures. Two natures and one person. Now remember that the Trinity is three persons in one substance. Okay? three persons of one substance. Jesus is two in one, the Trinity is three in one, but they're not the same kind of threes and ones, or twos and ones here. How many persons are in the Trinity? Good. How many persons are in Jesus? Yeah, many people will think, oh, two persons in one, just like the Trinity is three in one. No. It's two natures in one person. By the way, if there were two persons in Jesus, the Trinity wouldn't be a Trinity anyway. What would it be? It would be a quadentity. Because then you'd have four persons. Right? So Jesus is the second person of the Trinity adding to himself a human nature. One person, two natures. But now the confession I want you to notice further tells us that these natures were whole, perfect, and distinct. First whole. There have always been those who wanted to say on one side or the other Jesus wasn't quite everything God was or not everything man was. On the one side, the Aryans said Jesus is not wholly God. He's very close, as close as anyone can come, but he's still not the same. No, it's a whole divine nature. The Apollinarians, on the other hand, said that Jesus didn't have a human soul. In the place of the human soul, there was the divine spirit, or logos, the divine mind. But the confession says, no, he had a human mind, soul, body, and he had God's nature as well. Holy God, holy man, one person. Not only are they whole natures, they are perfect natures. There's no defects in them. And then thirdly, they're distinct. You can distinguish divine attributes from human attributes, okay? You can distinguish between the color of an orange and the shape of an orange, can't you? You can distinguish them. That doesn't mean you can separate the color from the shape, but you can distinguish them. And so, in Jesus, though you cannot separate the human and the divine, you can distinguish them. In which case, when Jesus dies, we do not say God dies. We say the God-man dies, and specifically, he dies with respect to, to distinguish now, with respect to his human nature. The human nature of Jesus died, not the divine nature, because of course, being divine, it cannot die. So again, we've got some really great, well-put, precise theology. So that two whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person. Notice, inseparably joined together. When Jesus died and then rose from the dead and ascended on high, he didn't leave his human nature behind. Inseparable. I don't know if you've ever thought about this. It's really kind of marvelous, and I'll lead you to praise God before you. go to bed tonight, Jesus is never going to give up our nature. He's always going to be like us. Always. Now, He's God. That's how much He's become committed to us, married to us in our nature, if you will, in that He will never put it aside. It's not as though Jesus said, OK, I've finally done what I need to with this cargo. I'm going to get rid of it. He's always going to be a human. God will always have joined to Him human nature. in the second person of the Trinity. He will always be like us. He will never lay aside that human nature. And the two natures are inseparable. I've already said they're distinct, but you can't separate them. And therefore, they are without conversion. The one doesn't become the other. The divine doesn't become human, and the human doesn't become divine. They're without composition. You don't compose them together. And they aren't confused. They always can be distinguished. It's not as though, well, sometimes it's ambiguous. Is this now like the divine nature working or the human nature working? They're always working together, distinct, without confusion. And the approved texts are given under Ann. Luke 1.35 is cited again. But then Colossians 2.9, which is, to be honest with you, one of my favorite verses when dealing with the Incarnation, proving it from the Bible. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." In a bodily fashion, everything that God is came to expression in Jesus. Isn't that amazing? Everything that God is, the fullness of the Godhead, was expressed bodily. Romans 4, excuse me, 9, 5, "...whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed forever." Here's the eternally blessed God who came in the flesh. 1 Peter 3.18, For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just or the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. He had a true human nature. You would say that he died as to his flesh, and the Holy Spirit gave him life. 1 Timothy 3.16, Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory. Questions? I'm not sure if the phrase is relevant to the intention here. You're talking about, not you first, but one center of consciousness, emotion, volition, what they do together, relationship, I said, but the properties of that center of consciousness, I'm just, by the way, that may not be the best way of putting it, I'm just trying to express what you will take a person to be, a center of consciousness, volition, emotion, and the properties that are divine and human pertain to that center of consciousness, emotion and volition. Yes, Dave. Yeah, but notice in just what you said there was no confusion because you could say he availed himself. Yeah, but the point is you don't ever get any kind of murky oil and water combination and you say, Is this divine nature, is this quasi-divine nature human? No, it's very distinct. There's no confusion between the two. The divine nature did not eat fish and bread and drink wine. Yes? Because we don't want to make the essence of our humanity different from Adam's humanity, it's proper to say that that it was of the essence of Adam's humanity, that it could suffer, but he had not come into that circumstance in which he would experience that. It was essential that he had the ability to suffer, yes, but that was not a common infirmity in Adam's day, obviously. But in Jesus' case, he had an essential human nature, capable of suffering, but it was common to suffer. One person, one mind. One person, one mind. And that one mind has both human and divine attributes. One thing that is true of God is that he knows everything. Something that's true of men is that they don't know everything. And that's part of the great mystery. In our first lesson, I'm not sure if you were here that night, that's what I was going through, is all these things were just so hard to put these together, and yet the Bible clearly puts them together. Jesus knew everything as to his divine nature, but he did not avail himself of that as to his human nature. and yet he was one mind, one person all along. The last statement says, which person, notice not persons, as Nestorius would have it, which person is very God and very man, yet, yet one Messiah. There's not a divine Messiah and a human Messiah, there's one Christ. This person being both God and man, very God, and very man. What does that mean? Like extremely God? Extremely man? No, very here means what? Veritable, right? Truly, fully, genuinely. Very God and very man, yet only one Christ. And because He is God and man, this is beautiful, He's the only mediator between God and man. That is so significant in the history of Western thought. I mean, it would take a whole lesson. I can hardly recommend a better work than Rush Dooney on The One and the Many, or especially, what's the book on the early church creeds? Well, come to me. Anyway, he talks about this expression, that means nothing. The state, the church, the family, no individual, no one can take the place of Christ mediating between the eternal and the temporal, between God and man. There's only one point of mediation, and that's Christ himself. That's right, foundations of social order. Thank you, Joe. And the proof text down below, Romans 1-3, concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared to be son of God with power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead. And then 1 Timothy 2-5, For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. He's the mediator and he is able to be that mediator because he's a man. So he's like us, he can represent us, and yet he can represent us perfectly to the one God because he is of one substance with the one God. So he uniquely qualifies to be the bridge between God and man because he is in his own person God and man. Okay, let's review. How many natures in Jesus? Okay, have you ever experienced that in your natural experience? Anything by analogy you can appeal to for somebody having two natures, divine and human? Isn't the way we tend to think, is it? Well, if he has two natures, then our experience would say he must be two persons, right? A person with this nature and a person with that. So how many persons was he? He was not of two minds. But he did have two sets of attributes. And it's a mystery how they could both be in this one person, but this is what we're being told by the Confessions. Now, do we accept this because it's so easy, given our own past experience, to see how it could be true? Now, as I told you at the beginning of our lesson, if we accept this view of Jesus, we need to realize we do so only because he taught it. He is the one who has the authority to tell us who he is. To put it simply, only Jesus can interpret Jesus. Every attempt you make, and whenever this TV show is, every attempt men make to interpret Jesus, they're always going to get it wrong one way or the other. Okay? Because he is so unique, he alone has the authority, prerogative, to tell us what he is, who he is. This is the heart of Christianity, in the sense that you take it away and you no longer have a Christian faith. You have something that's been distorted along the lines of human imagination and wisdom, something that's more akin to our natural experience and expectation. You take away the mystery of what we call the hypostatic union, two natures in one person, take that away and you no longer have biblical Christianity. Any questions? Okay, I'll give you a real quick example since time is short here tonight of confusing the two natures. If you say that the attributes of the one nature are communicated to the other nature, I think you've confused them. So that, an attribute of his human nature is that he has a body. An attribute of his divine nature is that he's omnipresent. Now, if you confuse those two, then you would say the body of Jesus is omnipresent. So that his body is distributed throughout the universe. You say, who could make that big a mistake? Okay, specifically? Well, Lutheran theology. Yeah. Confuses the two natures in that way. And Lutherans do not, well, I don't mean people who go to the Lutheran church, but I mean those who are self-conscious historic Lutherans. They don't flinch at saying God died on the cross. The Reformed people say, you want to be careful. The God-man died on the cross with respect to his human nature. Right, what that's saying is the God-man. Right, but that's why the Confession says that what is said of one nature may be said of the whole person. And this interchanging of attributes, in that verse in particular, is acceptable because of the union of the two natures, but we're still not to confuse the two. God doesn't have blood. There's no such thing as divine blood. This helps us, I'll be real quick about this because we've gone late, but sometimes people want to know whether it's wrong to have pictures of Jesus. Because the Bible forbids us to make any picture of deity. I mean, I can imagine some people making pictures of Jesus thinking they're making a picture of deity and that would then be sinful in its intent. But the body of Jesus is not deity. The body of Jesus is humanity. And that's all you can make a picture of. Now, historically anyway, artists have tended to be uncomfortable just making a regular human picture and so they add things like, what, a halo or something of that nature. But Jesus did not have a halo. He didn't have some kind of, you know, glowing skin. If you walked into the cafeteria where everyone was eating, including Jesus, you would not be able, by looking at his body, to say, oh, you're the God-man. Not by looking at his body, if you'd been introduced to him as the God-man, recognized him so, but there was nothing that set him apart as to his body. Now, people will say, but Dr. Bonson, if you're saying it's alright to make pictures of Jesus, not for worship purposes, but say, for Sunday school material, aren't you separating the deity from the humanity? In terms of what I just told you, am I separating the deity from the humanity? No, all I'm saying is that the distinct human nature of Jesus could be pictured. And you better be willing to say that, because when Jesus ascended to heaven, do you think Peter forgot what he looked like? His human nature could be pictured, could be remembered. Now whether it's wise to make such pictures and whether it's wise to have them in churches where we worship, that's a whole other story. But it's not a violation of the second commandment in and of itself to make a picture of the historical Jesus who walked on earth, ate fish, went in boats and things of that nature. Not all reformed people are willing to say that, and many get upset with me for saying it, but I think that we're just being truer to the confession when we say we can distinguish these two. And as long as you're not making a picture of Jesus so you think, when I go into that room I can pray and be closer to God, you're not violating the second commandment. Well, if you're going to have an Easter play, I think it's better for somebody to play the part of Jesus than for there to be no part of Jesus. If you stop and think about it, if you're going to have it, you're going to have to have somebody play the part of Jesus. And remember, since there's nothing about his body that distinguished him as God, there's no reason for us to hesitate theologically about that. The hesitation that I would have, it's not in the production, but in finding somebody that would have, I don't know, the self-confidence to say, for a few minutes on stage or a few hours on stage, I'm going to try to portray the most important man who ever lived, a man who was the God-man himself. I'm not saying it's blasphemous. I'm not saying it's sinful. I'm just saying, boy, what kind of, again, self-confidence would a person have to be willing to do that? But there's nothing in and of itself wrong with stage plays where Jesus is portrayed. What do we teach our children if we don't have pictures of Jesus in Sunday school literature or in a stage play where he was supposed to be there? We teach him he wasn't really human. He was always the ghost man, the one who never appears in the picture, you know? I think that teaches them worse theology than having a picture that some people say is misleading. And, of course, people will say, well, we never know what Jesus really looked like. Yeah, but I don't think very many people who paint pictures of Jesus or draw pictures of Jesus are trying to say, I've had a vision and this is what Jesus really looked like. Yeah, if they are, we can rebuke that, but in and of itself, you don't have to say this is what Jesus looked like. I still remember, I had somebody who complained about one of the churches that I worked in once because they had a stained glass window of Jesus in Gethsemane. I think everyone took it to be such. Anyway, a Presbyterian minister who visited that church complained about the picture, and one of the elders of the church, wanting to pull his leg a bit, said, well, what's your complaint about this picture? He says, well, here, you're picturing Jesus. You're not supposed to do that. He said, that's not Jesus. That's Peter. Now, I know that's a little tongue-in-cheek, but in terms of argument, I mean, he really had the better position here, right? I mean, how can you prove this is Jesus? No one, and do you think the artist, is it conceivable an artist would say, oh no, I painted Peter instead of Jesus? No, because no one is making any claims that this is actually what Jesus looked like. Well, I don't say, I shouldn't say no one, but it's not in the nature of the case and not commonly the case that that's what artists are trying to do. Is our understanding of Christ, or Christology, an essential aspect to who we would fellowship with as Christians? I mean, since it's such a major doctrine in Christianity, there's a lot of clarity about statements about Christ. What do we do with people who have, let's say, an implicit denial of Christology in the Lutheran conception of Constantiation? What do we do about Christian fellowship, I mean, that's a major... It's troublesome, isn't it? Very troublesome. 2 John, verses 9 and 10. Would you read that for me? Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever continues the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring the teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. Very strong. If you don't have the teaching of Jesus. I would differentiate between those who have confusions and fallacious reasoning, like Lutherans in my estimation, humbly. And those who say, well, look, we know that a man cannot both know everything and not know everything. So somebody who has what we'll call a more liberal or a humanistic picture of Jesus. Somebody comes praising Jesus as a good Hebrew prophet, but not the Son of God. The Bible says you're not to welcome him into your own house. Now, I also interpret that as house church, not that you can't have him sit in your front room and talk to him and witness him. Yeah, the church must draw the line at Christology. And I would say, even though I'm not going to reject the salvation of somebody who makes these mistakes like, say, Lutherans, I would certainly say they do not have the right to speak and teach with authority in the church. They ought not to be ordained if they hold to a Lutheran view. And that's why, of course, we have Presbyterian and Reformed churches distinct from Lutheran churches because of things like this. Well, you've been very patient tonight. Thank you for letting me get through this entire section. Lord willing, when we come back together, we'll now continue in the Confession in Chapter 8. The next section is going to talk to you about the special virtues of Jesus as the Messiah, the God-man, particularly what sets him apart from other men. You may want to read ahead, and when we come together, we'll study that.